What is Smarketing?

What is Smarketing?

Smarketing refers to the practice of aligning Sales and Marketing teams in order to achieve a common organizational objective. This helps reach a synergy between both teams which work together as one team instead of treating each other as separate departments.

Why do organizations need Smarketing?

As per conventional organization structure, Sales and Marketing are organized under different departments. Due to this, both teams tend to work in siloes. When related teams work in siloes, it leads to a lack of effective communication leading to lower overall productivity. 

If the Marketing team is not aligned with the Sales team’s requirements, then this can lead to lower conversion because of low-quality Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL). Similarly, if the Sales team is not aligned with the Marketing team’s approach then this can lead to situations such as the loss of qualified leads due to a misunderstanding of client’s requirements or leads lost due to non-timely follow-ups, etc.

This necessitates that both teams work together and align their efforts toward their common objective for the benefit of the organization, be it increasing revenue or improving branding in order to increase better brand recall in the market.

How to align Sales & Marketing?

• Improve access to information: Teams tend to be misaligned if both of them do not have shared understanding and information. Lack of communication happens when teams do not have the appropriate information and insights needed to support each other. Organizations should bring together both teams under the same umbrella with shared information. Using smarter tools such as CRM can help teams achieve that since they can get quick access to information they need to support each other.

• Cross-functional teams: Instead of making Sales and Marketing operate independently under separate leadership, try to bring together professionals from both teams to work in smaller teams together. If this is not possible, then leaders can try to build a matrix structure where resources tend to experience working together with cross-functional teams. This helps build better bonding with team members and they tend to align their efforts toward common goals.

• Communicate the Vision: Leaders should constantly communicate the common objective to both teams in order to keep the Sales and Marketing aligned. Communicating the goal and letting them know the expectation goes a long way in aligning two different departments.

• Measure and Analyze regularly: Leaders should measure and closely analyze the efforts and performance of both teams. The best practice would be to have common meetings with both teams in order to keep everyone on the same page. 

• Use good collaboration tools: Try to use good collaboration tools which improve communication with both teams. Tools such as cloud tools like Google Docs, Google sheets, Cloud-based CRMs, Instant chat messengers, etc, can help with that.

I hope this article helped you gain a better understanding of Smarketing, its importance, and some ways to achieve that.  By the way, if you are looking for a smart CRM for your team, do check out ToolsOnCloud Sales CRM.

How to motivate sales teams in startups

Being in sales, you must very well know the importance of motivation. Highly motivated sales teams tend to deliver high performance and are always self-driven without the need for a Sales Manager to oversee every small task.

But having a sales team with all time high motivation is not an easy task. Sales managers have to constantly pour in effort to keep the motivation level of the team high. This not only boosts an individual’s performance but also keeps the team morale high.

Here are some of the tips you can use to motivate your startup sales team.

1. Set challenging yet achievable goals

In sales, every term, be it a quarter or month or week, starts with goal setting where team members get their own target or quota. As a sales leader, you have to ensure the goals you set for your team are challenging yet achievable. Many sales leaders tend to keep the targets so high that it appears obvious that those are non-achievable. This ultimately leads to low-morale among the team and leads to low motivation. While if the goals are achievable, there exists a sense of feeling among the team that they can surely reach their number and celebrate their achievement.

2. Celebrate every small winning

In order to keep the team’s motivation high, the Sales leader should ensure that the team's achievement is being appreciated, be it small or big. Make it a culture to celebrate every small winning of the team. Break down the goals into small milestones and celebrate the win. Call for a small casual get together on the office floor and celebrate the milestone.

3. Bring in Gamification 

Concept of gamification works very well for teams where you want to bring in a culture of healthy competition. Introducing gamification within your sales team lets them enjoy the competition and also help in their personal career growth. In this way, instead of running behind unachievable targets, teams will at least try to improve their own game by learning how the top performers within their team are doing it.

4. Reward performers

Rewarding the best performers can be a high motivation booster for the team members. Recognising the best performers for their contribution not only boosts the morale for the performer but also creates a sense of motivation among the other fellow team members who would aspire to be in the same place during the next term of the award. However as a Sales leader you should also ensure that the criteria for rewarding the employees is logical and doesn’t favor the same person always, which may otherwise not serve the purpose of boosting the team morale.

5. Mentor your team

If there are high performers in a team, then relatively there will always be some team members who would fall into the low performers bucket compared to the average expected performance. The sales leader should take up the responsibility to mentor their team to succeed rather than to try to get rid of low-performing team members. Since no one is a born sales professional, this skill can definitely be learnt given they get good guidance and mentoring. Try to talk one-on-one with the team members, understand their challenges, give them feedback and give them appropriate time to overcome their challenges. That’s how you boost team morale and help them grow.

6. Give constructive feedback

During day to day activities, not everything you plan will go smoothly as per the expectations. There will always be some hiccups and challenges in normal business activities. If something goes wrong, take up the initiative to give constructive feedback to the team instead of finger pointing at anyone and trying to put them on the spot. Giving constructive feedback is a significant morale booster and denotes that the leader cares for the team.

7. Design motivating sales compensation structure

Though every other non-monetary effort is good, it would become worthless if the sales professional is not being compensated well for his effort. Sales professionals tend to be number driven and they apply the same math on their personal career growth in terms of compensation as well. Having a well designed sales compensation structure is essential for motivating the team. Try to have a balanced structure with base compensation and sales incentives in order to keep the motivation level of the team high.

8. Ask about their career goals and provide a fulfilling career path

As a sales leader, your goal is to build a long term relationship with your team. This necessitates that you understand their career goals and aspirations in order to provide them a fulfilling long term career path. As sales professionals are very ambitious and career driven, they would not stay for long in an organization where they cannot visualize a better future version of themselves. Hence it is important for the Sales leader to build the right culture and career path where the team can foresee a long term relationship. Motivation is directly related to the length of relationship expected. Since the rewards of long term association is high, if the team doesn’t see a long term career path, it will lead to low motivation and ultimately leading to low performance as well.

Having said that, Motivation is an ongoing need and you need to embrace the above activities as part of your ongoing organization culture in order to derive the best outcome.

By the way, one of the best ways to assess your sales team performance is using a good Sales CRM tool which lets you track your sales figures and metrics accurately. 

If you are yet to try out a Sales CRM tool for your team, do check out ToolsonCloud Sales CRM.